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1 introduction State, Mass Media, and the New Moroccan Authoritarianism on the morning of december 17, 2010, a vegetable seller named Mohamed bouazizi covered himself in gasoline and set himself ablaze in the tunisian town of sidi bouzid. Just an hour earlier, the local police had harassed bouazizi, demanding bribes to allow him to continue selling his vegetables. fed up with years of abuse by the police, bouazizi went to the local governor’s office to complain. after officials ignored him, bouazizi, desperate to have his voice heard, went into the street and committed his act of self-immolation, a stunning form of public protest against systematic corruption, repression, and injustice. despite the attempts of doctors to save him, bouazizi eventually died from his wounds on January 4, 2011. few knew it at the time but bouazizi’s protest hit a deep nerve. While tunisia had experienced significant economic liberalization during the previous twenty years, the country’s political elite maintained legitimacy largely through the intimidation, violence, and coercion of the security forces. by the start of 2011, tunisians still lived in a heavy-handed police state that crushed freedom of expression, public protest, and acts of dissent. The police, in their various administrative forms, were widely feared for their systematic repression and human rights abuses. despite the dangers involved in expressing public dissent, bouazizi’s self-immolation inspired massive street protests against the regime of tunisian president Zine el abidine ben ali, who had ruled the country since 1987. demonstrations expanded exponentially as bouazizi’s death unleashed long-simmering anger over years of abuse. on January 14, 2011, to the shock of many observers, the ben ali regime crumbled in the face of these protests and the disgraced dictator fled to saudi arabia to avoid accountability for his years of rule. on January 25, 2011, street protests erupted in cairo that would quickly lead to the ousting of another long-standing dictator, hosni Mubarak. no doubt, the tunisian revolution served as an inspiration. but there is an even more specific connection between the initial egyptian protests and the events in tunisia that has been largely overlooked. bouazizi set himself on fire because of years of police abuse and repression. as in tunisia, the egyptian police were widely known 2 | Moroccan Noir for their corruption and human rights violations. for decades, the regime had used the various police divisions as a means to crush dissent, silence opposition, and intimidate the public. despite widespread and long-standing disgust at the repression of the security forces, egypt had a national holiday in which the public was expected to celebrate their police for maintaining the nation’s stability. The protests in egypt that would bring down the Mubarak regime began on January 25, the holiday known as “national Police day,” as a mass expression of anger and outrage against decades of police abuses. Police repression is an experience that binds people throughout the arab world, not just egyptians and tunisians. after the anticolonial movements of the 1940s and 1950s, post-independence leaders consolidated their grip on power by using the police to arrest, detain, and torture those viewed as a potential threat to their authority. This included anyone who represented significant opposition to the regime and, possibly, their friends and family. from leftist intellectuals, academics , and journalists to islamist radicals, members of the political opposition, and ordinary citizens, people across the political and socioeconomic spectrum in the arab world have experienced the authoritarianism of the state through the medium of police violence, intimidation, and corruption. because of this shared experience, the police, in their different divisions, came to symbolize not only state-authorized violence, as in democratic societies, but also the lawlessness, repression, and human rights abuses of authoritarianism across the region. as Peter K. Manning writes, “The police are the most common symbol of governmental authority in everyday life.”1 in the arab world, police, authoritarianism, and state became intertwined in the post-independence period. it should therefore come as no surprise that the police—with all of their symbolic value—could serve as the spark that ignited the recent tunisian and egyptian revolutions. in Morocco, the link between the police and state authoritarianism is just as strong. as in other countries in the region, police repression emerged in Morocco immediately after independence. after hassan ii became king in 1961, he widened the use of the security forces to crush dissent, arresting some five thousand people in 1963 alone. only two years...

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